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The corruption is strong with this one
Trump has passed along his greed and self-dealing genes to his sons
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Hello! It’s Thursday, Oct. 8. It was three years ago yesterday that Hamas terrorists attacked Israel in a massive cross-border assault from Gaza into southern Israel. They slaughtered 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped another 251 and took them to Gaza, where as many as 48 died. In the ensuing Israeli invasion of Gaza, more than 74,200 Palestinians have been reported killed, more than 175,200 people injured, and an estimated 10,000 are missing, presumed dead under collapsed infrastructure.
In light of the horrific allegations at Cornell, last week’s Fast Forward made a proposal: It’s time to retire the “Not all men” trope/excuse. You can read it here.
You can find all past newsletters on the Fast Forward homepage. If you follow FF on Substack but don’t yet subscribe, you can sign up here.
📅 Almanac
In metro Boston, the sun rose at 6:49 a.m. and will set at 6:13 p.m. for 11 hours and 24 minutes of sunlight. The waning moon is just 3% full. And that will help with the interesting night sky tonight.
First, this is the best time of year to see Saturn. Tonight you’ll have a good 10 hours to see The Ringed Planet starting around sunset, low on the horizon in the east. Its peak height will come around midnight due south. Astronomers say it will emit a steady, golden-white light, and since it’s a planet, it won’t twinkle. If you have a telescope, you should see its rings.
Second, tonight is the peak of the Draconid meteor shower in early evening in the northern sky. So called because they shower near the constellation Draco the dragon. (Remember Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter?)
The Old Farmer’s Almanac: Eastern white pines grow massively tall, lose their lower branches so you can’t sunbathe nude in your yard, ruin your car’s finish with sticky sap and pollen, drop copious amounts of needles all over your yard, and fall over every time Mother Nature so much as looks at them cross-eyed. But those guileless optimists at the Almanac always see the bright side:
The connection to the bountiful medicine of the trees can bring such comfort and magic to our kitchen and our lives. Imagine a steaming pot of White Pine twigs and needles on in the kitchen, the scent of fragrant pine wafting into the air. You sip the tea with a little honey and perhaps breathe in as you lean over the pot to allow the steam to be pulled into the lungs. That steeped tea can then be poured into the bath to allow further connection to this medicine. Perhaps the cells in our body rejoice when we awaken this connection to the trees.
— “White Pine Remedies“ by Audrey Barron
The cells in my body rejoice when I awaken the connection to oak trees that form the casks in which Jameson ages.
🏈 Hey, sport
The Patriots host the LA Raiders at Gillette at 1 p.m. Sunday (CBS/WBZ), and we’re wondering: Is QB Drake Maye finally over the yips? Is Efton Chism the next Wes Welker / Danny Amendola / Julian Edelman? Could the linemen please get tighter belts to minimize the number of butt crack views? It looks like a plumbers’ convention out there.
🤑 O, where to begin with the corruption?
How about with the older Trump sons. They’re always good for a laugh, although what they’re doing now isn’t funny. Don Jr. and Eric apparently have brought a whole new meaning to influence-peddling. They deny it, of course, but it’s verrrry interesting how the brothers invest — either directly or through a venture capital firm where Don Jr. is a partner — in defense and tech companies that later end up getting billions in federal funding and lucrative government contracts.
And then there’s the Fat Cat in Chief himself. Since returning to office, he has raked in more than $2.2 billion, according to The New York Times (🎁), from crypto, active stock trading, branded merchandise (Bibles, watches, perfumes), legal settlements, and foreign licensing fees from real estate projects in Saudi Arabia, India, and Scotland.
He doesn’t even try to hide his self-dealing or make excuses for the obvious conflicts of interest. Who do you think he thinks about when making policy — the American people or the companies that can line his pockets? Sorry, that wasn’t a fair question. The answer’s too obvious.
Meanwhile, over at the “no-fatties-no-t******s-no-beardos-no-weirdos-no-wimps-no- radicals” Pentagon, our military forces are in retreat from bases around the world in the face of actual and threatened attacks by Iran — you know, that “lunatic nation” (Trump’s term) that now controls the Strait of Hormuz.
David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt write in the NY Times (🎁) that Iran is forcing American aircraft and personnel to flee their once-secure bases, resulting in constrained US power and the exposure of enormous new American vulnerabilities.
“American personnel were evacuated from bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar,